Page:Comical history of Simple John and his twelve misfortunes (8).pdf/18

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MISFORTUNE VII.

On the next morning, she sent him again to the bridge, to see if he could find any of it in the water, and there he found some ducks swimming and ducking down with their heads below the water, as he thought, gathering up his money, he kills one of them, and rips her up, but found none of it in her guts or gabbie; then says he, they have been but looking for it, I'll go do as they did; strips off his clothes and leaves them on the bridge, goes in a ducking, in which time, a rag-man came past, and took away all his clothes. So he went home naked to get a bath of the old plaister.

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MISFORTUNE VIII

The next morning she sent him to a farmhouse, for a pig-ful of butter-milk and as he was returning through the fields, the farmer's bull and another bull was fighting: the farmer's bull being like to lose, John runs in behind him, and sets his head to the bull's tail,